The continuing saga of K-9
So our friend journalist Lewis Beale sends me this email yesterday:
In yesterday’s Sunday Times Magazine, there’s a story about a Palestinian terrorist living in exile in Ireland. The author goes to visit him, and… “We stepped into the blandly furnished living room. James Belushi’s cop-meets-German-shepherd movie, ‘K-9,’ was playing on the flat-screen TV.”
Clearly this can’t be true. K-9? Ireland? And a relocated terrorist? But sure enough, here is the article entitled “The Palestinian Terrorist and Me.” And there 8 paragraphs from the end, is the K-9 reference.
Now I suppose this isn’t really all that big of a deal. But I’m sitting here thinking about the massive confluence of events to put that movie in that place on that TV in front of that guy.
The story started in 1986 in Ventura, CA, based upon a true-life incident where a local cop lost his K-9 partner, shot and killed while attempting to stop a robbery. My writing partner at the time Steve Siegel and I thought that was an interesting starting point for an original screenplay. I did my part writing the script while driving all over California doing my stand-up act, working out story beats on a hand-held tape recorder, then taking a week off and pounding out pages in the house my wife and I were renting in Albany, CA. The script sold to Universal in January, 1987. The movie was produced and shot in San Diego against the backdrop of the WGA strike in 1988. It was released in April, 1989, spending one week at the top of the box office. Since its debut, the movie has aired on CBS, USA, TBS, HBO, Cinemax, and continues to do so to this day (it’s on HBO a lot during the next month or so). I still get royalty checks from Germany, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries where it’s evidently still playing on cable TV somewhere.
And then in Ireland. On a TV set. Of an exiled Palestinian terrorist.
Bizarre.